Polish director Michał Marczak’s black comedy Certainly The End Of Something was named the winner of the Screen International’s best pitch award at the 21st edition of the Baltic Event’s Co-Production Market at the Black Nights International Film Festival in Tallinn this week
Written by Marczak with Pawel Demirski, the feature project centres on a woman from a notorious Warsaw neighbourhood, who kidnaps a kingpin of the “gentrification mafia” who are destroying her beloved district.
Marczak said he planned “to tell a highly nuanced tale of revenge” that will use a “comic-book sensibility to tell a serious subject matter”.
The €2.5m project is now in development, with €241,859 of funding in place. It was pitched in Tallinn by Marczak with producer Anna Różalska of the Warsaw-based talent management and production company Match&Spark.
Marczak’s previous credits as a director include All These Sleepless Nights which received the award for best director in the World Cinema - Documentary section of the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, while his 2012 documentary feature Fuck For Forest had its world premiere at SXSW in 2013 and won the main award at Warsaw Filmfest the same year.
He has also directed music videos for such artists as Radiohead and Thom Yorke.
Best project award
Ukrainian director Ruslan Batytskyi’s Blindsight won the €5,000 best project award from a jury comprised of Slovakian producer Katarina Tomkova of Kaleidoscope, Margrit Stärk, director of feature films at Germany’s ZDF Studios, and Mubi’s development manager Sibila Diaz-Plaja.
The fiction feature debut shows how a war veteran’s devotion to the goalball team he is coaching for the Paralympic Games is challenged when he learns his son is starting to lose his sight. The jury said the project celebrates the power of storytelling as an act of hope and a necessity to surviving these dark, uncertain times.”
The film will be produced by Olha Beskhmelnytsina and Natalia Libet’s Kyiv-based 2Brave Productions whose previous credits include Kateryna Gornostai’s Crystal Bear winner Stop-Zemlia and Mantas Kvedaravicius’s Venice Critics’ Week title Parthenon. The project has €30,000 of its €980,000 budget in place.
In addition, the jury awarded two free accreditations to next year’s Producers Network at Cannes’ Marché du Film to one of Iranian cinema’s pioneering women producers Elaheh Nobakht for Mahmoud Ghaffari’s Blue Girl and Romania’s Adriana Racasan of Bucharest-based Point Film for Cristian Pascariu’s debut feature A Flower Is Not A Flower.
Works in Progress and Script Pool award
Puerto Rican director Edgar De Luque Jácome’s LGBTQ+ drama The Fisherman’s Daughter took the best international project prize in the Works in Progress section of Industry@Tallinn. It was presented by producer Annabelle Mullen Pacheco of San Juan-based Belle Films.
The jury of French consultant Ariane Buhl, sales agent Thorsten Ritter and festival programmer Andrei Tanasescu, praised the project for “ the urgency and immediacy of its story, and its call for acceptance”.
The best Baltic project prize went to Latvian director Liene Linde’s Black Velvet, in which the jury noted an “insightful and never self-indulgent look at our existential anxieties.”
Basque film director Marina Palacio’s coming of age tale And Thus It Will Go On, which is to be produced by the Bilbao-based independent feminist production company Gariza Films, was named the most promising project by the Script Pool jury of UK literary agent Mark Brennan, MubiI’s senior licensing manager Margot Hervee and Louis Balsan from the producer and financier Anton.
The five international projects selected for this year’s Script Pool also included the Israeli-German co-production Talitha Kumi by Hadar Morag and the LGBTQAI+ drama Venus.Me by the Estonian freelance artist Heinrich Sepp.
Meanwhile, the jury for the Just Film Works in Progress section focusing on projects for children and young people gave its award, including a €1,000 cash prize to help the film gain visibility by covering promotion and publicity costs, to the emerging Hungarian film director Martin Boross for his debut feature Raw Material.
The ceremony also saw the Estonian Association of Audiovisual Authors (EAAL) present two scholarships with a value of €1,000 aim to support the filmmakers’ personal career development to the Ukrainian directors Marysia Nikitiuk (Cherry Blossoms) and Ruslan Batytskyi (Blindsight) who had presented feature films in development at the Co-Production Market.
Another five scholarships had previously been given to the Ukrainian directors showcased in this year’s specially created “Coming From Ukraine Works in Progress” section: debutant Denys Tarasov (Diagnosis: Dissident), co-directors Stanislav Gurenko and Andriy Alferov (Dissident), Arkadii Nepytaliuk (Lessons of Tolerance) and Artur Lerman (Region of Heroes)
The 21st edition of Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event was held over six days from 20 to 25 November, with more than 769 accredited participants, including 75 following the programme online from around the globe.
At the end of the award ceremony, Marge Liiske, head of Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event, announced that the 22nd edition will be held next year between November 13-17 r, a week earlier than this year.
Earlier this week Portuguese World War II series Finisterra took the ‘most promising project’ prize as part of the TV Beats co-financing market awards.
PÖFF awards the winners in the main festival tomorrow (Saturday 26), before the festival closes on Sunday 27.
Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event 2022 winners
Script Pool award – And Thus It Will Go On (Sp) dir. Marina Palacio, prod. Lara Izagirre
Works in Progress
Best international project – The Fisherman’s Daughter (P Rico-Col-Braz) dir. Edgar De Luque Jácome, prod. Annabelle Mullen Pacheco
Best Baltic project – Black Velvet (Lat-Lith) dir. Liene Linde, prod. Guntis Trekteris
Just Film award – Raw Material (Hun) dir. Martin Boross, prod. Gábor Osváth
Baltic Event Co-Production
Best project award – Blindsight (Ukr) dir. Ruslan Batytskyi, prods. Olha Beskhmelnitsyna, Natalia Libet
Best pitch – Certainly The End Of Something (Pol) dir. Michal Marczak
Producers Network prize – Elaheh Nobakht for Blue Girl; Adriana Racasan for A Flower Is Not A Flower
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